That's all I'm really capable of doing right now because my fan-girling is just too intense for me to handle.

But, firstly, I have to apologise for being so late in returning the review because there is no excuse and I was reminded by your review that I read yesterday /again/ because I still don't know how to honour it with all the loveliness that you included in it. Gah.

But I am here now and your one-shots are too hard to resist so I'm going to be popping in and out with reviewing (I'll definitely read the majority).

ON TO THE STORY (L)

I think that my favourite part out of the whole of this piece was the first couple of paragraphs. They were just...ugh, wow. The personification of the candles and I absolutely adore this line:"For her, the years have stretched and bled, are wrinkled and destitute, silent."

That was just...wow and so poetic and lovely and it made me want to melt and gah. Honestly, my vocabulary is not my friend at the moment.

I looove how different this was compared to Cicada where that was all about their relationship that had so much love and companionship in it and here - with the same pairing, they're so disconnected in an emotional way. They're so desparately apart from each other that they both can't give what the other one wants from each other - there's too many limits in this craggy cliff that is their relationship.

I adore they way you eased in the history between the two, and most of all Daphne - that's one of the techniques that I just utterly love when its done so amazingly. I have this image of someone knitting and you've disturbed them towards the end of their little masterpiece, but you're not allowed to see the what they've done already. So you're just there silent and watching them knit and all the words and the history are weaved into every stitch until you get to the end and then when you've seen the whole of it its still not enough - you need to see and know about all the little touch-ups as well that make it this little jumper or quilt that's just emitting so much attention and detail and soul into it.

I don't even know if this makes any sense anymore, but yes. I just enjoyed every single minute of reading it and I only regret that I hadn't read it sooner.

Hanzi xxx

Author's Response: asdlfkjasdf

That, right there, is my made-up word to describe the loveliness of this review. I don't even... Gah. Thank you? Thank you! Thank you thank you! I just... Yeah. Thank you eight thousand times over.

I am absolutely tickled that you singled out that line. Honestly, I really love it when lines are singled out period, but that one has a special little story behind it, so. You see, I write at least once a week. A lot of it is really terrible, but it's more of an excessive than a "yeah, let's publish this." Once in a while, I'll rummage back through all the rubbish I've written, because often I'll find little gems of lines surrounded by really terrible writing. That one, the one you pulled out, is one such case. I found it drifting in a sea of bad writing, and I pulled it out to use it somewhere else. Anyway, that's a really long explanation for a little line, but. :)

I love that you call them disconnected. I knew that they were dysfunctional and all that, but I never really considered them disconnected. Somehow, that word just describes them absolutely perfectly.

Anyway, thank you so, so much for the lovely review. I cannot begin to thank you enough. You are absolutely wonderful and... gah. I don't know if this response is doing it justice, but... thank you!